Midlife Cycling: Happy New Year

Showing posts with label Happy New Year. Show all posts

01 January 2024

For The New Year

Happy New Year!

I couldn’t resist posting this image from Cicloposse because, well, I like it.

The image was used to herald 2021 which, nearly everyone hoped, would be much better than 2020. Or at least people hoped—or even assumed—that it couldn’t be worse.

I hold onto similar hope for 2024. Some have said that it might include this nation’s last democratic (with a small “d”) election, especially if you-know-who is elected. But many people who took up cycling during the pandemic have kept with it and there does seem to be some awareness, at least among some officials, that urban and transportation planning can’t begin and end with moving as many motor vehicles as possible from point A to point B, as it has since at least the building of the Interstate highway system.

I hope that the increased consciousness and good work I’ve described isn’t undone by energy and economic policies that include only fossil fuel-powered vehicles and deems nuclear power and natural gas to be the only “green” alternatives. I mean, if President Ronald Reagan could declare, with a straight face, that “trees cause pollution,” what could a Trump administration say about any kind of alternative transportation?

Even as I think about such possibilities, I still hold on to hope. A new year has begun, after all, and it looks like a good day for a ride.

What wishes do you have, dear readers, for the New Year?

01 January 2023

Happy New Year!

You've probably heard the expression, "May you live in interesting times." Although often uttered as a benediction, it's said to be a translation of a curse: "interesting" is, according to this story, is a euphemism for "difficult." Others have claimed that it was always meant to be said ironically: The wisher wants the recipient to live in peaceful, i.e., boring, times.

Perhaps more important whether than wanting someone else, or one's self, to live in interesting, boring, peaceful, tumultuous, or whatever kind, of times is how different you want 2023 to be from 2022.

Image by Peachaya Tanomsup

01 January 2021

Moving Forward To 2021

Happy New Year!

The past year was difficult for many of us, for all sorts of reasons. I have no idea of what this year will bring--well, all right, I think the first few months, at least, will be difficult as the COVID-19 pandemic rages. However and whenever the pandemic ebbs, all we can do is to move forward.

That is what we, as cyclists, know how to do. Even--actually, I would say "especially"-- those of us who like vintage or "retro" bikes are forward-looking: We are riding toward a landscape free of the encumbrances of fossil fuels, social and economic hiérarchies and the tyranny of companies that dictate what we can and can't use.

Pioneering female cyclists Violet Ward and Daisy Elliot, 1895. (Alice Austen, collection of Historic Richmond Town.)

One thing I can't help but to notice is that social progress--which is to say, equal access to dignity--comes as more women and girls ride bicycles. (Why do you think I underwent a gender transition? ;-)) Think of the bike booms of the 1890s and 1970s: Those are, perhaps not coincidentally, when the first and second waves of feminism washed over American society. I would like to think that we are in another boom and that it will result, current setbacks notwithstanding, long-term gains for women.

Women cycling in Davis, California, 1967

If nothing else, if we see more women (and people of all other gender identities) on bikes in 2021, things have to get better. I hope so.

01 January 2020

Riding To End, And Begin

Happy New Year!

I began this year with a whole wheat bagel from Lots o Bagels. I brought another of their whole wheat bagels on my first ride of the year, to Point Lookout: a 120 kilometer (72 mile) round trip.

That, after ending last year with 140 kilometer ride to and from Connecticut. I encountered more traffic than I anticipated, but at least most of them, I assume, hadn’t begun to drink.

The moral of this post? The best way to begin or end is to ride.

Hmm...Does that apply to the book I’m writing?

18 January 2019

Home Again

By the time you read this, I'll be on my way home or already there. Back to my "normal" life!

If you don't hear from me for a day or two, it's probably because Marlee wouldn't let go of me. I guess I can't blame her if she's upset: After all, I spent a week away, a couple of days home, and more than a week away again. So far, I've been home for only three days in 2019!

Will the rest of the year be a journey? For the world, it might be an arduous one, to say the least. It might be for me, too, but I hope that it will be as interesting and fun as it's been so far!